Hits and misses of Bollywood in Q1 2008

April 13th, 2008Related|Filed Under

EconomicsTimes

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Business_of_Bollywood/Hits_and_misses_of_Bollywood_in_Q1_2008/articleshow/2938373.cms

As April arrives, one starts planning for the new financial year. And our plans are quite based on the pros and cons of the previous economic year. Bollywood too completed its first quarter of 2008 and hope the filmmakers learn from the ups and downs of this phase in the coming three quarters. Here’s assessing on which flick clicked in the first quarter of 2008 in Bollywood.

Hits

From more than a dozen releases in three months, only two films managed to work successfully at the box-office surviving for more than the first week. Ashutosh Gowariker’s magnanimous period drama Jodhaa Akbar was the first hit of the year, in fact a blockbuster. The grand canvas at which the film, budgeted at Rs 40 crores was mounted, showed in every frame of the film. Despite all the controversy surrounding its historical recreation, the film faired extremely well in the domestic market and won a super-hit tag in the overseas territory. The film got an advantage of consecutive maiden weeks with no release in its following 3 weeks of release. The release was planned accordingly and also other medium to small films tried to keep safe distance from this mammoth movie.
Jodhaa Akbar is now the 7th biggest All Time Grosser at the Worldwide Box Office with revenues close to Rs.130 crores. The film has performed incredibly well in the international markets becoming the 2nd highest all time grosser for any Indian film in the US & Australia. Jodhaa Akbar is also featured amongst the Top 5 Hindi film earners of all time in the Middle East & the highest non SRK starrer in the UK after Dhoom 2, two years ago.

The second hit came close to the end of the quarter in the form of Abbas-Mustan’s Race. A multi star-studded cast and a slick look worked over the trademark Abbas-Mustan thrill tricks. Race raked in Rs. 70 crores at the BO in just 10 days in India, making it the 2nd highest opening week of all time. Internationally too, Race grossed a box office of 20 crores, taking its 10 day box office figures to 90 crores worldwide. The film is still going steady at the box-office.

Interestingly a common factor behind both the hits of the first quarter happens to be the UTV banner that produced Jodhaa Akbar and distributed Race worldwide. Says Siddharth Roy Kapur of UTV, “It has been an exciting and rewarding time for all of us at UTV Motion Pictures, having had the opportunity to market and distribute two of the biggest successes in recent times. Our line up for the next 3 quarters of the year also promises to live up to the benchmark we have set for ourselves.”

Average

Rohit Shetty’s action-comedy Sunday starring Ajay Devgan, Arshad Warsi, Irrfan Khan and Ayesha Takia was the only film that could survive in January. A masalaI-laced treatment and lack of any major opposition helped it do some average business.

Rajat Kapoor’s sensibly crafted Mithya with an interesting storyline and a riveting act by Ranvir Shorey won critical acclaim and a good word of mouth worked in the film’s favour. Mithya did decent business since it was a good (and the only) option for people who had nothing other to watch after Jodhaa Akbar.

Subhash Ghai always maintained that Black & White is his experimental attempt and its low-budget helped him in recovering monies. The film did fetch good reviews but the offbeat theme didn’t seek many audiences.

The dim-witted comedy One Two Three that closed the first quarter is working with the masses and might continue to exist till a big fish soon gobbles it up.

Flops

Needless to say, flops ruled Bollywood and its number overpowered the films doing hit and average business, put together. Ajay Devgan’s much anticipated Halla Bol was rejected outright for Rajkumar Santoshi’s outdated treatment to the subject of social injustice. The film’s release was delayed from 2007 to 2008 with respect to strong opposition like Welcome and Taare Zameen Par. But that didn’t help Halla Bol from being a disaster. Nikhil Dwivedi’s My Name is Anthony Gonsalves could not find any audience. Nagesh Kukunoor shocked us all with his worst cinematic attempt so far in the form of Bombay To Bangkok where he resorted to slapstick comedy and failed to invoke any laughs. Kunal Khemu’s double role didn’t help Super Star from dropping in a single week.

Regional films dubbed in Hindi which could not gather any audience included the festival oriented Anuraanan (Bengali), Manisha Koirala’s long-delayed Tulsi (Telugu) and Nagarjuna’s outrageous potboiler Don No.1 (Telugu). Rajpal Yadav’s ham-personified Rama Rama Kya Hai Drama was expectedly a flop. Smallies like Kabhi Socha Bhi Na Tha, 26 July at Barista and Lovesongs lacked face value and were lost into oblivion with zilch promotion.

There Are 4 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by satyam on 14 April 2008:

    I put up a very long comment in that other thread on Nahata saying why OSO worked and JA didn’t and then discovered that the thread was closed. because I don’t like to waste my efforts I’m putting up the response here:

    “Jayshah has called JA a Superhit in his BO Column. So now Jayshah too is dishonest !! This is by the same guy who keeps saying that he ONLY trusts Jay’s BO ratings on movies.”

    While I understand the desperation of those like the commenter here who’ve been trying very hard to nail me in some fashion the fact is that if there’s one thing I don’t need to be told about it’s how Jay runs his columns!

    But I also see the desperation when despite my comprehensive response people deliberately misread what I’m laying out in the greatest detail. But let’s try this once more:

    1)First off I’m not obligated to agree with Jay on everything and in fact have disagreed with him in the past at many points in terms of the numbers

    2)But because I find his methodology absolutely sound, his larger graph of various films completely plausible, I often defer to him. In other words the disagreement is usually not a very big deal for me

    3)But for those who never followed Jay (and who now have for example become great believers in ‘trending’ after ridiculing it forever in a very opportunistic move since they now don’t have the big initial to say otherwise!) and who always insisted on ‘distribution prices’ and so on as the yardstick, that’s who my comments are addressed to. On those grounds I don’t believe JA is even a hit, let alone a superhit, though it’s certainly profitable in many limited regions. What I believe or Jay believes about JA is even irrelevant. because we were believing lots of things about many other films as well and we were ridiculed for it. The same Jay was called biased and someone who’d doctored the numbers when it came to Guru or CDI. So how did he suddenly become most reliable when it comes to JA?! I have no problem at all accepting JA as a significant success based on my or Jay’s guidelines. But those weren’t the guidelines everyone else was following.

    Therefore I will not let anyone shift sides all of a sudden without calling them out on it. Just as I couldn’t suddenly start relying on BOI if I had accused them of unfairness all along!

    But that’s one part of my criticism. The second part as I earlier stated is that based on the numbers, distribution prices, budget and so forth there’s no way that JA is doing that kind of recovery. To ensure the plausibility of such a claim those advancing it throw out fictitious figures on budgets and so forth.

    I am not obliged to look at budget or anything for Drona because I have not been in this game to begin with. It’s like the Nahata example on JA. I never considered Nahata God but those who did have to follow him for JA also! The onus isn’t on me, it’s on the others!

    Now Som I believe raised a point that there is no “compulsion” for a film to raise all its profits only from the theaters and there are other things like satellite rights or DVD sales and so forth. I disagree with this proposition because then that is the standard we should use for every film. But this is also problematic because many films perform in very mediocre fashion at the box office but are still profitable for the producer because of these factors. But the chain of distributors and sub-distributors still loses out.

    Incidentally people are completely mistaken when they think that if a UTV is distributing it all over India there’s suddenly no ‘loss’ to be factored in. That’s an absolutely erroneous view because where a film loses money the profit margins (if any) are reduced. Also it’s a bit more complicated than UTV directly releasing the film everywhere. There are still local networks and chains involved, in essence lots of middlemen. Barring the multiplexes where it can be a more straightforward transaction though even here not as simple as it sounds.

    Ultimately a film is expected to generate its revenue from tickets sold. That is how distribution prices and so forth are fixed. The producer might make a table profit before release, the produce might make a profit even when the film flops. But that is not a sound way of doing things.

    However this is exactly the sort of chaos that is often spread (I’m not referring to Som) on forums like NG to play every side of an issue. Let’s say you want a SRK film to succeed. You start putting out stories about lower than expected budgets, lower than expected distribution costs, etc and then you have the lowest possible bar for the film to be a hit or a superhit. Conversely if you don’t want an Abhishek film to be a hit you start doing everything in reverse fashion! So we had the absurdity where UJ was apparently sold to distributors only slightly lower than KANK! This according to some of our ‘experts’ here! much as the a producer total is thrown around when it suits the same and not otherwise. Much as Taran is the devil when it comes to Don but God when it comes to Guru! We saw it most recently with JA where Nahata who was the ultimate authority on every single film was completely ignored for JA with ridiculous reasons. This is how the game is manipulated here and this is what I am usually addressing irrespective of my views on a film. So yes there is blatant dishonesty and it often works because there are enough partisans here who want a certain outcome for their stars. So if you’re desperate to have JA called a superhit you’ll of course gravitate to anyone who tells you this. BOI right off the bat was calling the opening great and so forth when no one else was and the partisans loved this! But the ‘experts’ here also play up to these vulnerabilities in various ways.

    Jay called Guru a 50 crore superhit. There were no takers for him then. Suddenly the same become his fans with JA! It doesn’t work that way! You have to be consistent. You have to be honest.

  2. Comment by Myna on 14 April 2008:

    My comment is in reference to the other thread….but a generic one.

    If anyone feels the forum quality is not maintained, its bcoz of the blatant lies, dishonesty, hypocricy and constant propaganda few ppl are indulging in. Forum will be a much better place if people follow what they preach and expect from others.

  3. Comment by Achilles on 14 April 2008:

    Jay is just one of the very many sources who has acknowledged the Superhit status of JA in India.

    The lame propaganda that JA is not a Hit on the distribution side is a pathetic lie … only a shameless frustrated propagandist can come up with such a load of crap with no logic to substantiate it. But then he has been doing this since the day JA released.

  4. Comment by Achilles on 14 April 2008:

    It takes some imagination to claim all the trade sources has given the Superhit/Hit+ verdicts not based on the distribution price of the movie … but based on personal bias!

    Personal bias results in constant silly propaganda … nothing else … as we hve been constantly been witness to … becharee IBOS and its propagandist writers/followers.

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